I just got updated to Thunderbird version 5 today. I WAS on 3.1.11. This is fucking ridiculous! Jumping that many version numbers is completely unwarranted, IMO it's just so they can get parity with Firefox. Now Thunderbird is at parity with Firefox, I have a niggling suspicion that they might make a move toward another Mozilla Application Suite. Not that I'd mind, I'd actually rather like that (MAS was what got me into Firefox in the first place).

I just think that all this version number inflation is going to succeed in doing is alienating their core users. I find it rather insulting that they feel the need to wow us with higher version numbers just to "keep up" with the competition.

I don't think a version number can be "insulting" or see how it would result in anyone "alienating their core users". I suspect Mozilla cares more about the version numbers than 99% of users, yourself excluded, do.

save the add-on .xpi to your desktop you must navigate to the addons page (not using the addon browser, but going to the ff addons site) and right click on the download button>save as> save the xpi file then:
rename the .xpi to .zip
open the zip and extract the install.rdf
open the install.rdf with any text editor
find 4.0.* could be any version number
edit to 5.0.*
save and put back in zip overwriting the original and save zip
rename .zip back to .xpi
open firefox and "install add-on from file" find modified .xpi

now you'd follow the procedure I've noted above to get those addons to work.

save the add-on .xpi to your desktop you must navigate to the addons page (not using the addon browser, but going to the ff addons site) and right click on the download button>save as> save the xpi file then:
rename the .xpi to .zip
open the zip and extract the install.rdf
open the install.rdf with any text editor
find 4.0.* could be any version number
edit to 5.0.*
save and put back in zip overwriting the original and save zip
rename .zip back to .xpi
open firefox and "install add-on from file" find modified .xpi

Click to expand...

Make a program to do that. I would, but I don't have an XPI file to play with.

All browsers especially are jumping through version numbers quickly because of all the competition. It's not just IE and Mozilla anymore (Opera was always a footnote XD). Recently, the rapid increase has been due to hardware acceleration of website rendering as well as support for HTML5 (which changes every month it seems like).

Make a program to do that. I would, but I don't have an XPI file to play with.

All browsers especially are jumping through version numbers quickly because of all the competition. It's not just IE and Mozilla anymore (Opera was always a footnote XD). Recently, the rapid increase has been due to hardware acceleration of website rendering as well as support for HTML5 (which changes every month it seems like).

save the add-on .xpi to your desktop you must navigate to the addons page (not using the addon browser, but going to the ff addons site) and right click on the download button>save as> save the xpi file then:
rename the .xpi to .zip
open the zip and extract the install.rdf
open the install.rdf with any text editor
find 4.0.* could be any version number
edit to 5.0.*
save and put back in zip overwriting the original and save zip
rename .zip back to .xpi
open firefox and "install add-on from file" find modified .xpi

now you'd follow the procedure I've noted above to get those addons to work.

Click to expand...

It's much easier if you use an archive utility that let's you edit files inside the archive - IZArc for example.

Then open the xpi file in IZArc, edit the rdf, save and you're done.

However some of the xpi's use names that look like registry keys. In that case, you will have to peruse the sqlite extensions database to try to figure out which one goes with which extension.

IF everyone is going to get there pants or knickers in a twist over a bloody version number then you realy do have sad lifes, its a number get over it and grow up, stop stressing yourselfs out for no reason lol life is more important. I'd rather go have a curry with friends than moan about a stupid number.